Went and got some birth, marriage and death certs. They were, as we thought, from the borderlands of Kildare and Wicklow, not far from Blessington. The father was described as 'labourer' on the death cert and daughter Elizabeth as 'labourer's child'. I couldn't find a death cert for Katie, or a birth cert for Esther; there were two in the right-ish year, but both had different parents. The staff in the office told me that the efficiency of whether a birth, marriage or death is registered depends on who's doing the registering, so hospitals or doctors register deaths efficiently, and clergy register marriages efficiently, but in those days when children were generally born at home, the births were often not registered.
